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Clockwork was, is, and would always be, a weaver. When they weren’t bending the knee to the Panopticon, or leaving increasingly vague and entertaining prophecies around Daniel’s apartment, they wove the strands of time into tapestries of life. Glittering patterns of spiders’ silk, steel cable, hempen thread, depending on whose life it was and where they fit into the timeline.
Dan caught them at their weaving not long into his residence. They had been caught up at a snarl in the weft, and he managed to sneak up on them, reaching out to run a finger along the edge of the finished section.
Clockwork reacted instinctively, grabbing his wrist in an iron grip. “Do not. This lifeline doesn’t need anymore assistance in tangling.”
“Jeez, didn’t mean any harm by it.” He yanked his wrist back, shaking the beginnings of static out of his fingers. “Anyways that part is done, how would it be hurt if I touched it?”
All he got was a baleful stare in return. “I don’t wish to have the Panopticon darkening my doorstep after I submit this to them. Nor should you.”
Ah, that was a fair point. He hated those freaks, and they hated him back.
-
The subject didn’t come up again for a long while after that, not until an errant spool of sunflower gold thread bounced across his path, rolling to a stop against the side of his foot. He scooped it up to inspect, and looked towards the direction it had come from.
A small flock of burgundy blob ghosts was watching him expectantly. He hadn’t seen this particular group before amongst the usual flocks that frequented the tower, but new migratory groups came in all the time, sometimes even with travelers and petitioners.
Dan held the spool out to them, flat-palmed, and the leader of the flock didn’t hesitate to grab it back. He got the sensation of something like thin plastic or bone points on his palm when it did, and he swallowed a shudder. The flock whorled around the leader for a brief moment, and then as one spiraled away down the hall.
Weird.
-
The third time, Dan decided he was going to swear off all forms of artistry for the rest of his existence.
He had been caught, not in one of Clockwork’s looms, but in the more natural weaving of some kind of spider that had made it into the lair. Perhaps Clockwork simply ignored the presence of another large predator because they knew they were the superior, or maybe it had set itself up long ago, and unknowingly grown strong on wayward blobs.
He hadn’t even been in one of the forbidden rooms, simply wandering the perimeter of the lair, and it wasn’t until he noticed that the cobwebs were sticking firmly to his suit that he realized he was in any kind of danger. By then, the trap had been sprung, and glistening silk held him hostage.
He tried calling for Clockwork, but there was no way they’d hear him through this much stone and brick. Wailing also briefly crossed his mind, but again, stone and mortar above him, and no way to escape the law of gravity.
He tested one of the strands with a claw, watching it strum without any sign of fraying. Then he felt it. Something on his shoulder, like bones tap, tap, tapping. He flinched, and the little blob fluttered into the air, clicking affrontedly at him.
“Oh thank the ancients I thought you were the fucking spider.” Dan huffed, feeling his blood pressure spiking. “Hey, is there any chance you can get Clockwork down here? You know, the ghost in charge of this lair?”
The blob stared at him, its red eyes illuminating the otherwise dark room.
“Please, little man. I really don’t want to get ended down here.”
It chattered at him again, before flying past him into the dark. Not more than a moment passed, and the rest of the flock swarmed him (with their horrible bone point touches), all chattering and hissing at each other.
“So this is what has my precious assistants all distracted today.”
The voice was distinctly feminine, but the hand that landed on his shoulder was decidedly not . Two fingers and a thumb only, made of some kind of keratin and all tipped with curved claws that snagged into his suit.
“An intruder to the lair would have been dispatched by now, so who might you be? An offering to the weavers of life? Or just the one who drew the short straw?”
The hand on his shoulder turned him around in the web, and his motion was halted by three more.
The fucking spider indeed. There was no way Clockwork wasn’t even a little bit aware of the nightmare living in their basement.
-
As it turned out, the only actual nightmare in the lair was etiquette. Dan’s old nemesis.
Mar “Misery was my great-granddam’s name” Vex was big into Victorian Era tea, and all of the little intricacies that accompanied it.
“I notice you haven’t bruised his knuckles over these cookies,” Dan groused, shaking his hand and glaring at one of the little blobs, happily reducing a shortbread to nothing but crumbs.
“ He doesn’t know any better,” She countered.
“Well neither do I! I’m not exactly tea party material, you know.”
“But you will be! I bet we can get you Buckingham Ready in a few more months!”
“You wouldn’t be able to catch me re-dead in that hellhole-”